INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence begins with looking at phrenology. Phrenology was developed by Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828). He used techniques to map the brain’s surface to determine the brains’ structure. He mapped the surface by looking for bumps in the skull. Franz would observe a behaviour, then he would find an area/bump associated with that area. Bump size was thought to be indirectly linked to the competency of the brain faculty associated with it. The study of phrenology was controversial and suggested cognitive inferiorities associated with women and black people. By 1832, there were 29 societies for phrenology in Britain alone.

Alice Lee (1859-1939) fucking hated phrenology. She saw the science as too anecdotal and immoral. She disliked phrenology being used to justify that women were intellectually inferior to men due to their skull size. She worked in Pearson’s lab and was able to prove that body size and skull size was a covariant and not related to mental faculty.

Moving into the mid-19^th century, we have Francis Galton (1822-1911). Galton has been considered the founder of psychometrics due to his pioneering use of questionnaires as a method of psychological assessment. Galton focused on the variability of characteristics between people and argued that it was solely to do with their genetics and biology. Galton used statistics that are mimetic of the methods used today, including the use of the normal distribution in his processing of results, sampling methods and correlation coefficients. Using a Darwinian and statistical approach Galton theorised that intelligence is a heritable and normally distributed characteristic. He was also in line with the theory of knowledge thought by British empiricism; sensations are the foundation of complex cognitive thought. Galton assumed that more intelligent people would have a better sensation discrimination than less intelligent people.

In 1884, Galton established the Anthropomorphic laboratory in London. 9000 volunteers paid to have their intelligence measured in tests by Galton. Galton took tests reaction times and sensory discrimination as well as physical measurements. Galton was trying to grasp a routine of determining a person’s intelligence from these measurements, he failed miserably. Galton’s work kickstarted the approach to measuring intelligence in systematic way but his worked was flawed and deeply sexist and racist. It was Galton who first coined the word eugenics in his 1883 book, ‘inquiries into human faculties and their development’. In this book he used his ‘evidence’ of trait distribution in sweet pea and other anthropometric studies to justify that there should be social policy to prevent ‘inferior’ people from breeding.

In 1869, Galton published his book ‘Hereditary Genuis’. Galton justified that nature is the root cause for all differences in traits like intelligence. He used a big ‘linkage’ study using family trees from royals to determine that it was nature that made them intellectually superior. A method known as Historiometry. Galton’s main aim was to find a dilution of a specific trait, like intelligence through a ‘great’ family’s lineage. Galton blamed the marriage between genetically superior families and genetically inferior families for diluting traits that would be favourable for the survival of humanity. In an 1875 paper, Galton outlines the importance of twin studies. He calls them the ‘natural experiment’ given that they appeared to have the same birthing environments. The goal was to determine if raised apart, they remained to have the same behavioural traits. During the early 1900s, twin studies became the golden form of understanding behavioural genetics.

Swiss botanist De Candolle publish a work of literature in response to Galton’s book. De Candolle looked at the environment’s influence on different traits and used a similar structure of arguments as Galton’s book. These bodies of work are cited as the beginning of the nature, nurture debate in psychology. It must be noted that Dalton did begin to integrate environmental/nurture factors into his later works.

In 1874, Galton conducted a further study using questionnaire techniques which was then published in his book, English men of science: nature and nurture’. The book concluded that an influence of both nature and nurture must be considered to understand differences in intellect. Galton’s theories were not considered to be ‘science’ today and eugenics was heavily questioned and later debunked. However, Galton’s work had a huge influence in the US with Yerkes and the APA creating racially biased intelligence testing as an example. When science moved away from eugenics, political policy was still influenced by Galton’s ideas. Up until 2014, some Californian prisoners were forcibly sterilised.

Charles Spearman’s turn to hit the scene (1863-1945). Spearman was influenced by Galton’s idea that intelligence was based on the sensory ability of a person. In his 1904 paper, Spearman noticed correlations between sensory discrimination for touch and intellect (measured by academic attainment). The correlation was seen to be positive by spearman. From observing the positive correlation, Spearman suggested that there was a general psychological factor that could determine a person’s intelligence (aka ‘g’). Spearman observed that children’s scores tend to correlate across different academic tests. Later he also endorsed a specific intelligence which he named (‘g+’). This led to spearman developing a 2-factor theory of intelligence.

Alfred Binet (1857-1911) was a French psychologist. He worked under Charcot at the school of psychology at the Sorbonne. He began his interest into child intelligence when observing his two young daughters. This allowed him to build the relevant information about child development. Unlike Galton, Binet saw intelligence as a combination of cognitive processes instead of being driven by sensory and motor skills.

 Binet designed the first ever intelligence test (with Theodore Simon in 1905). Binet originally developed the test as a means of detecting children with special educational needs. Binet and Simon noticed that children who were older in age completed more of the tasks; this varied between children with no cognitive impediments and children with special needs, even if they were the same age. This caused Binet to develop the idea of a chronological and mental age, the differences between both ages could be used to determine a child’s intelligence. The child’s mental age was then compared with the net average age of that cohort, determining whether that child was slow in development. Binet varied massively from Galton. Binet suggested that intelligence scores can change over time and can be improved, suggesting a nurture element to intelligence. Because of this, Binet warned against labelling children as inferior to others based on these intelligence scores, a concept different to Galton’s approach.

Then in 1908, American, Henry Goddard translated the test, calling it the Simon-Binet. The Simon Binet was then adapted by Lewis Terman who created a remix of the test called the Stanford-Binet. The Stanford Binet was associated with a series of tasks, increasing with difficulty. Each task was associated with a mental age: The age at which one was thought to be able to complete the given task. This was then compared with a participant’s chronological age to give IQ:

Mental Age/Chronological Age x100 = IQ  

This calculation was suggested by Wilhelm Stern in 1912. It was later adapted into the Simon-Binet Scale. The Stamford-Binet Intelligence Scale is important for testing the intelligence of children and young adults. It compares participant results against a pre-recorded normal distribution of data, making it an effective tool. However, the SBIS approach is not helpful for understanding adult intelligence as the mental ages on SBIS only went as far as adolescence. Furthermore, the concept of mental ages in adult intelligence is less relevant as adults do not develop intelligence in the increasing chronological fashion as seen in children and adolescents.

The Weschler Scale of adult intelligence used a standardised normal distribution of adult intelligence scores, where the standard deviation is 15 with the mean score at 100. Developed by David Weschler.

Come the 20^th century and with WW1 in mind there were some dangerous assumptions of intelligence in the US. US thinkers were assuming that the Stanford-Binet was testing intelligence that was innate to a person. During WW1, the APA led by Robert Yerkes, used intelligence testing to assign civilians appropriate jobs during the draft. When all this data was collected and analysed, Yerke and co. found a gulf in intelligence scores between 2 groups of people. In the upper echelon of intelligence scores, Northern-European and English-speaking countries. Dominating the lower ranks of the distribution, were South and Eastern European countries, these included countries like Russia, Italy, and Poland. Psychologists assumed that due to their opinion of intelligence being innate, American migrants from Eastern and Southern European countries are less intelligent. This assumption led to racially biased policies for immigration in the 1930s. It also led to high levels of discrimination towards migrants from these countries. However, the reason behind the gulf in results between these two groups was due to experimental error and not any eugenic science. Intelligence tests were in English. For most Eastern and Southern European populations, English is not the native language. Naturally, if you don’t speak English as a native language, you will do worse on an intelligence test that is written in English.

This was also seen in the UK. The Education act of 1944 saw the introduction of 11+ tests in England and Wales. The 11+ was formed based on evidence given to the ministry of education by Cyril Burt, a British psychologist. The test became infamous as it was a gateway to entering better education like grammar and independent schools. The test was incredibly biased and restricted education from students who were from tougher SES backgrounds. However, it was found that Burt had falsified the data that the 11+ was based on.

There was allot of debate around intelligence testing and to whether intelligence testing was innate. This led to the use of twin studies to determine the genetic component of intelligence. The next main question in intelligence studies was whether intelligence could be considered one whole single aptitude. The Spearman general intelligence principle (or g).

More recent theorists have decided to analyse the concept of intelligence as having different facets/factors that contribute to it. In 1938, Louis Thurstone used a method called factor analysis to determine several different factors that contributed to intelligence:

•       Verbal comprehension

•       Numerical comprehension

•       Memory

•       Inductive reasoning

•       Perceptual speed

•       Verbal Fluency

•       Spatial intelligence

Thurstone’s method was clever. Looking at human language to describe intelligence removed human error which was found in other cognitive assessment methods like introspection. However, factor analysis does not allow for cross cultural comparison of intelligence factors.

In 1983, Howard Gardener found that general intelligence could not explain how individuals appeared to vary in aptitude to different tasks. Gardener suggested that there were multiple different intelligences that specialized in different areas of human cognition. These intelligences included:

•       Linguistic

•       Inter/intra-personal

•       Mathematical-logical

•        Bodily, kinaesthetic

•       Spatial

•       Musical

•       Natural

However, there appeared to be some controversies in intelligence testing, which placed the psychological discipline into contentious debate. In 1994, political scientist Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein published a book called the bell curve. In the book, Murray and Herrnstein attempted to justify how there appeared to be a racial bias when it came to intelligence testing and it’s subsequent distribution of intelligence scores. Rather than saying that impoverished, under-educated backgrounds caused low intelligence test scores, Murry suggested that it was the other way around. Murray interpreted the results to suggest that intelligence was innate to humans and that the racial distribution of intelligence scores was due to genetics. Lower intelligent races created their own impoverished environments; it was their intellectual failure that led to their unfortunate living situation, is the rhetoric enclosed in Murray’s book. The publishing of this book garnered huge attention from the public at the time.

The book then caused for two pieces of work; Mainstream science on intelligence and The Knowns and Unknowns. Mainstream Science on intelligence was published to the Wallstreet Journal in 1994 and was signed by 52 psychology professors across America. The knowns and Unknowns was created by a sub-section of the APA who published the report the following year.

PERSONALITY

The study of personality has been around since forever. How do we as humans differ to one another? Why do we differ? Over what dimensions might we differ? All questions I don’t really care about but here’s a brief history in personality anyway!

Ancient Greeks had many theories about individual differences. Pythagoras came up with the Aesara. A tri-part, geometrically based soul that was made of the Mind (Judgement), Spirit (courage) and desire (love). These three areas had to come together in perfect geometric balance with each other; think like an equilateral triangle. When the parts became unbalanced, or the triangle too obtuse in some angles, an ailment of poor mental health would ensue. Pythagoras’ work and theories had a total cult following but all centred around the role of triangular geometry in everything.

Another theory stemmed from the thinker Hippocrates, known for groundbreaking work in the field of medicine; see the Hippocratic oath. The Hippocratic theory of disease is formed from 4 elements (Fire, Water, Air and Earth). Any imbalance of these elements creates for disease and ailments for that person. Each element is linked to a bodily counterpart found in hall humans. These elemental body counterparts are referred to as humors. Humors are also linked with the four seasons. Later in history (129-199 CE), a physician name Galen adapted and developed humourism into four temperaments of personality: Melancholic (creative), Choleric (energy), Sanguinic (extraverted) and Phlegmatic (dependable).

During the Middle Ages, psychological thinking was dominated by the church. Which was boring. Basically, man is born with sin and must spend his life attempting to correct the sin he is born with. Done, no more, hate that stuff boo.

Now let’s skip a shitload of history and move towards our old friend, Behaviourism. We all know the drill, hates structuralism, loves environmental influence and not a fan of introspection. Behaviourists thought that personality was a result of conditioning. Ivan Pavlov suggested that neuron activity creates activation and inhibition that leads to a pattern of behaviour traits that form personality.

Time for Psychodynamics! Sigmund Freud (1856-1943) theorised that personality was comprised of three elements. The id (unconscious desires, animalistic in nature), the superego (knowledge of all rational and moral laws that dictate appropriate human behaviour) and the ego (our conscious self, balancing between the id and the superego). Freud also took a developmental approach and suggested that personality is formed through different stages or sensitive periods of growth and experience. These stages were named the psycho-sexual stages of development. Any disruption at any stage would lead to the creation of an undesirable personality trait, according to Freud.

Another Psychodynamics main dawg was Carl Jung (1875-1961). Jung is a founding father of analytical psychology. His ideas were less sexual and more driven by mysticisms. Jung believed in a collective unconscious; Everyone has this innate knowledge of people, behaviour, and themselves. The collective unconscious contains these archetypes that form personality:

Shadow: Scary ugly part of ourselves

Mask: Protects against the shadow

Anima: The qualities associated with the opposite gender

Jung also developed some important dimensions to aid in measuring personality: Introversion and extraversion. These were called attitudes. Jung developed some subsets of personality called functions: these helped to reinforce the mask and keep the shadow at bay.

Thinking

Feeling

Sensation

Judging

These existed in a continuum, where someone might be more thinking than feeling. These ideas lead to the creation of the Myers-Briggs type inventory in 1962 which is still a wildly popular test in contemporary life and used in occupational psychology. However, the creators of the MBTI were not psychologists, and many academics criticize its validity.

Gordon Allport (1897-1967) attempted to adapt the work of Jung and make it more empirical. He was the first person to coin the term trait; “neuropsychological structure…guide forms of adaptive behaviours”. Allport saw traits as a habitual pattern of behaviour. Allport and Odbert decided to try and find some of these traits and try to categorise them. Instead of conducting psychological studies, Allport and colleagues decided to use a technique called the Lexical Hypothesis. Analyse the linguistic habits of a population, how they might describe others, to determine a series of personality traits. Allport and Odbert found 4,500 words that could describe personality. They categorized the words accordingly:

Cardinal: dominates character (rare)

Central: Part of a person’s character

Secondary: preferences and smaller edifices of a personality trait]

Whilst Allport had common traits in these words, that could be analysed in a nomothetical manner, his approach was the adverse. Allport believed that personality is shaped by one’s environment. Given that each environment was different between people, Allport argued that you cannot categorize and compare personality traits between people. In 1937, Allport called for a more personalized and contextualised study of individual differences. The nomothetic approach to personality removed identity from the individual. Allport’s campaign for the idiographic method were not immediately successful. Results from idiographic methods had low statistical power and the findings were not generalisable beyond the study. Psychology’s approach for history has dominantly been the nomothetic approach to science. However, in 1955 Frank Du Mas suggested that idiographic data could be pooled, analysed, and correlated for relationships, allowing for the generalisation of idiographic data.

Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist, developed a method called the Q-sort. A participant will sort through a series of card with self-evaluative statements on: ‘I am friendly’ ‘I am outgoing’ etc. The participant will then sort these cards into categories like: ‘most like me’ ‘least like me’ ‘I was like this’ ‘my partner sees me as this’. The categories can obviously change meaning that there are infinite ways to complete the Q search.

4500 words is loads though, a tough number to work with. This lead psychologists attempting to categorise personality traits into a smaller number of items. This approach wished to make these items generalisable to everyone. The approach was named the nomothetic approach. Raymond Cattell (1905-1988) used a technique called statistical analysis. This method allowed Cattell to combine and remove personality words that were like each other, whittling down the number of words. This led Cattell to publish a series of traits that fit into 16 dimensions in 1946. There were other approaches to understanding personality at the time.

Hans Eysenck (1916-97), another nomothetic personality guy, argued that personality comes from neurophysiology; a sentiment echoed by Allport when he was first defining a personality trait. Eysenck came up with the PEN model, comprised of 3 traits that made up personality: Psychoticism, extroversion, and neuroticism. In 1958, Eysenck mapped these traits to the original humours model, developed by Galen all those years ago!

The most popular model for personality today comes from worked published by Tupes and Christal in 1961. They argued that at least 5 personality traits existed and could be tested over cultural boundaries. This idea was contested by Cattell and Eysenck. Eventually, this work led to the creation of the big five personality traits or OCEAN.

Openness

Consciousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism

Extended notes

One thing to preface is the idea that many theories around personality and intelligence throughout history are based around a systematically (in one way or another) giving measurement to each concept. Intelligence is scored, personality is categorized. A consistent theme, especially in early experimental psychology, was the idea of creating a means of study that reflected physics. Psychologies precursor, Psychophysics attempted to create rules and laws about human behaviour and cognition. The idea of capturing, abstracting, and operationalising human behaviour is the ethos of experimental psychology. One argument that can be made for personality is whether the study of personality has always been a nomothetic approach as seen today by personality inventories like the big 5, the TIBI and the MBTI to name a few. The main players for the nomothetic approach to personality